PAIR O' DIMES

DID YESHUA FULFILL THE LAW?

There is a popular question out there, “is the glass half-empty or half-full?’   The question seems redundant.  Either answer fails to change the level of water in the glass, and leaves us wanting more.  But, what if the glass is the Law of YHVH (Torah)?  Do we look at the law as an incomplete portion?  Did Yeshua come to fill the Law to the brim for us to drink, or to drink it in our stead?

What did Yeshua say he came to do?  In his only recorded sermon, popularly known as the sermon-on-the-mount, he said this, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Matt 5:17-18) 

Growing up in the church, we all have been taught that this statement means the exact opposite of what he actually said.  We learn that he said, “I didn’t come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, I came to do it all so you don’t have to.”  Using our analogy of the glass being the law, we could restate that as, “I came to fill up the glass and drink it myself.”  

What about the second half of his statement?  He said, “…not an iota or dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” 

What did he accomplish so that the law could pass away? 

The church would have us believe that he accomplished his destiny at the crucifixion and now the law has been done away with.  When he said, “It is finished” that means all the iotas and dots would pass away.   

See how that works?  By plucking a verse here and tacking it onto a verse from somewhere else, we can piece together a picture we want to see…not necessarily what we should see.   

Is the glass of the Law (Torah) half full, half empty or did Yeshua fill it to the brim?  And if he filled it to the brim does that make it pass away? 

WHAT DOES FULFILL MEAN? 

The Greek word for ‘fulfill’ is pleroo (pronounced ple-rue-o).  It means to render full, or in other words, to complete and FILL TO THE TOP so that nothing is wanting.  Fill to the brim!  Provide understanding! 

The Church would have us believe that we have been granted a reprieve from the Law!  He filled it full to the brim!  Right?  Then he said, ‘it’s finished’ so we’re off the hook!

I suppose if we think the Law was somehow incomplete this would make sense.  But, is that what he meant when he said he came to fulfill the law?  Was the Law incomplete?

 

Or would it be more accurate to say that the portion of the law [the Penalty for breaking it, i.e. You Sin You Die] was taken out of the way? 

Or could we say that he came to help us to fully understand the heart of the law: why it is good, perfect, and useful for life? 

Or was it both?

WHAT IS THE LAW FOR? 

Was the Torah given to us just to prove we couldn’t possibly attain its standards?  Or was it given to us for our instruction so that we would know how to live in harmony with our Creator and with our fellow man? 

I do not believe the notion that says the law is too hard to follow and is some sort of impossible goal that the Father gave us just to prove how inferior we are and how great He is.   

He doesn’t need the Law to show His greatness!  All you have to do is look at the world He created and consider the magnificence of the One who made everything.  That’s why the Psalmist said: 

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  (Psalm 19:1) 

And Paul said: 

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:20) 

So why did He give us the Law?  And if He gave us the law just to ‘put us in our place,’ why are we still here now that Yeshua has ‘fulfilled’ the requirements of the Law?

BACK TO OUR ANALOGY 

If the glass represents the Law, and Yeshua filled it to the brim, does that mean that the Law was incomplete? Or do we misunderstand what the glass represents altogether? 

How was it that Yeshua filled up the law?   

The best answer is that he came to fully implement, demonstrate and teach the beauty and love inherent in Father’s instructions.   He came to restore the pure word of the Father by removing the man-made traditions that diminished the Law.  (Mat 15:3 … He said to them, “Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?) 

The Church has twisted his words to say that the Law was bad and only the death of the ‘Son of God’ could remove it out of our way.  It seems, from that point of view, that the Words that YHVH gave to Moses were just temporary.  They were just waiting for someone (God himself) to do it all perfectly so those pesky commandments could be abandoned for ultimate freedom! 

Does that even make sense?  

What if we (rightly) look at the Law as the Way of Salvation?  

But, but….that’s why Jesus came!  He is our Savior!  He paid it all!  He nailed the Word of YHVH (Torah) to the cross!   

Sometimes when I verbalize the sequence that I learned in the Christian Church, it sounds so utterly ridiculous that I am amazed I ever believed any of it. 

YESHUA AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN

Years ago, I thought it would be marvelous to do a word study on 'water' in the Bible.  It is probably the most all-encompassing subject in there!  I became discouraged by the sheer magnitude of the concept. 

But, Yeshua pared it all down for the Samaritan woman.  

Yeshua replied to her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman tells Him, “You don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep. Then from where do You get this living water?

Yeshua replied to her, “Everyone who drinks from this (well) water will get thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never be thirsty. The water that I give him will become a fountain of water within him, springing up to eternal life!”

(from John chapter 4) 

What was the ‘living water’ that Yeshua would give?  What was it he came to do?

He came to fully teach (pleroo) the Torah and do the Father's will. 

The Christian church puts the emphasis on his death and resurrection (AND THAT IS SIGNIFICANT, don’t misunderstand) but it ignores the bulk of his LIFE, and that is what we should learn from.  Otherwise his life is meaningless!  It only matters that he ‘saved’ us from death?  Yikes! 

Don’t we still want the glass of water?  Can we fill it with living water, and what does that look like?  Do we pitch it when it is full?  Is it only for Yeshua to drink, or is it for us? 

WHAT IS INCOMPLETE ABOUT THE LAW? 

The short answer is there are two aspects of the Law.  There are instruction and the reason behind the instruction.  When we were first given the Law (on stone tablets) it was given with this caveat:  

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. (Deu 6:5-6) 

The words He commanded us were to be on our HEART!  Letter and Spirit; Law and Heart!  Never one or the other! 

We don’t understand why we have to follow it!  We don’t see the benefit because we see it as a chore, and not a beautiful loving way of life.  We go through the motions, but our heart isn’t in it. 

HOW DID YESHUA FILL UP THE GLASS OF THE LAW?

  

Yeshua taught the law has to come from our heart!  He said that the greatest commandment is to love YHVH and love your neighbor as yourself.  He then said, keep the commandments! (Deu 6:5 & Matt 19:16-19)   

So, if keeping the commandments is our half-full glass, then loving YHVH and our neighbor fills up the rest of the glass.  Yeshua said so!  We can say he taught that keeping the law along with love for YHVH and our neighbor is what leads to eternal life.  (Matt 19:16)  Two halves of the whole: A full glass contains Law and Love!  

DIDN’T HE FILL UP THE LAW BY FOLLOWING IT? 

Yes! Yeshua followed the law in perfection!  And in that way he DID fill up the law.  He kept all of the commandments and he did it out of love for the Father and for us!  He made the law complete by his actions and his intentions. 

Yeshua said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  The church would have us believe that means he filled up the law and abolished it so we don’t have to.   Does it begin to seem like that couldn’t be the case?  

A proper understanding of his statement would be to paraphrase it like this: “I am your perfect example of the Way, I am walking out the Truth, all that follow me and do what I do have Life.”  

He demonstrated it.  He walked it out!  He taught the people it wasn’t just words on a page (or chiseled in stone) it was supposed to come from our hearts!  He filled it to the brim with understanding!  Everyone knows that Yeshua was the epitome of love, for greater love hath no man than he that lays down his life for his brother. 

Does that mean he is above our ability to emulate his example?   

He said he came to do the Father’s will. 

We all want to think he followed the law so we don’t have to.  He died so we don’t have to!  But, reality check!  We all die, just as he did.  But, if we are to enter into the life eternal that he did, do we leave the glass half-full or do we drink from it with a full measure of understanding? 

Yeshua enlarged our understanding.  He filled up the law with meaning!  “Don’t even look at a woman with lust or you have committed adultery already!”  Isn’t that what he taught?  It’s not the letter of the law but the spirit of the law!  Don’t go through the motions, but understand that the Law is given to show us our heart and to mold us into what He is.  Didn’t he tell us that the entire Law and Prophets were suspended upon Love? 

BUT, PAUL! 

Paul is difficult to understand!  It is easy to misinterpret Paul’s letters.  But if our understanding of what Paul wrote conflicts with what Yeshua taught, it must be abandoned!  Who should we put our faith into?  Paul or Yeshua? 

Paul didn’t really teach against the Law, as is commonly supposed, but it fits our ‘Jesus paid it all so I don’t have to’ doctrine. It is popular to say that it is even ‘trampling the blood of Jesus underfoot’ if we follow the Torah!  But, what if what is popular is not what is true? 

This is what Paul actually said: 

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." (Rom 7:7) 

Isn’t he saying the same thing that Yeshua said in Matthew 5: 7-8?  Doesn’t the law expose our inward state? Doesn’t it convict our heart and expose our sin, just like it did for Paul? 

We should begin to understand the purpose of the Law.  It was not given to frustrate us.  It wasn’t given to set us up for failure.  It was given so that we would understand internally what the Father desires for us eternally.   

All of the words from YHVH are for us!  Why would we think Yeshua filled the glass full to the brim just to drink it for himself? Do you see that love and understanding completes the law?  Will you drink from the water of the word; the words of eternal life?  Or is your glass half-full; law without understanding, and without love? 

The Law is YHVH’s heart, and when it is written upon our own we become like Yeshua, the image of the Father!  Yeshua believed that he would be resurrected to be eternally with the Father.  That faith is what caused him to walk in the Torah!  And that same faith should be in us too!  We too can have the faith of Yeshua and join him (the First Fruits of the resurrection) by following in his footsteps.  He’s not carrying you.  He is leading the way! 

Yeshua said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13 -14)